AP Bio:

I want to thank everyone who contributed to the course survey for AP Bio. Your thoughts and opinions are very useful to me in helping to figure out what is working and what could be changed. Provided below are the responses that were generated. I have grouped similar items where they occur, and responded to all of them at the same time. I’ve tried to take care of spelling errors wherever possible, but I may have missed a few.

In terms of the areas of difficulty, I see a few patterns. One is that things that some students dislike, other students very much like. Which is not surprising, as everyone learns in different ways. There are also some items that can be dealt with very easily by linking you to resources that already exist. In those cases, I’ve provided the links below. For other items, I’ve tried to provide the instructional perspective that I bring to the course. I dearly hope that in these instances, it doesn’t read like me saying that you are wrong to feel a certain way about a particular aspect of the course, but I’m also certain you are able to understand that teaching involves making choices, and that it is not possible to always provide things that everyone will love all of the time. Please remember that I am always available to discuss your experience of the course.

Thanks again for taking the time to fill out the survey. I can’t say that I’m surprised that you all did such an awesome job.

Stuff People Like:

PDQ's I found extremely helpful with learning the material of this course.

I found that the POGIL's help me in understanding course material a lot.

I absolutely love to participate in the click and learn's and watching the get-a-five videos. They're super informative.

I like when we work in groups. It's helpful to bounce ideas off eachother and it's fun and easier.

The PDQ's are great, they help cover the chapter/material and is a great study guide for test and quizzes.

The Domain packets are helpful to a degree but do get tedious after a while.

Prezi presentations

PDQ'S, labs

PDQ'S! they are extremely helpful because its all the important information right in front of you

Class POGILS, because you’re working with people you are comfortable with and learning how to apply the material from the standards

PDQ's are very helpful.

I've found that hearing key terms and their definitions over and over makes them stick in my head more. Its nice to have our assignments laid out days/weeks in advance.

Most likely the use of the internet for practically everything we need. The website has been amazing, being able to see and click at will what needs to be done has made doing work so much easier.

PDQs

POGILs and other activities from the packet

Posters for explanation tools

Going over the PDQs is probably the most useful thing in my opinion because it is what teaches us the material. The lectures provided to us are engaging and not bland such as "Hey guys here's some notes, have fun with it.

Everything has been useful. Not biggest fan of journals.

AP Insight questions

Knowing i can rely on my classmates to help me with the homework and anything i'm having trouble with.

Evolution and how everything is related back to one another.

The notes on the course wiki helped me a lot and so did the crash course biology and get a five videos.

PDQ's are helpful towards this course because you have a general understanding of the topic before the discussion and the understanding of the topic is expanded through the actual discussion.

Areas of Difficulty:

Physical Space:

The seating arrangements/way the classroom is set up. I believe it would be much easier to conduct group activities if we had tables set up in the classroom instead of individual desks, that way, we wouldn't have to waste time moving desks around and getting organized.

I agree. It’s a difficult thing to do, given how the room is currently being used. Reminder: I am looking for suggestions on how to reconfigure the room. To this point, I’ve received none.

Learning Strategies

Help with information retention.

I would very much like to do this. I sent out the Reddit study guide, which I thought gave some good ideas. I don’t really know what else I can do on my end, but please give me suggestions.

Maybe give out review questions for the exam to prep us some more than he already does.

Give more Practice Multiple Choice/Free Response Questions, or sites that can help us with this. If we are given these resources it will help us prep for the AP Exam and Tests you assign. Other than that nothing I can think of.

Include more AP formatted questions.

Add more AP insight activities. They're very helpful and they also explain why your answer is wrong

I would add in practice AP multiple choice questions related to the material we were going over in class.

There is a shortage of AP Bio Review questions currently, period. This is due to how new the course is (folks just haven’t had enough experience with the exam to write enough items). I am trying to give you as many questions as I possibly can, but as you’ll see below, not everyone agrees that they need “more stuff”. I will assign all AP Insight question that I can. Additionally, the Get-a-Five website has free questions. Also, there is this depository of OpenStax aligned questions.

Maybe print out "useful information sheets" outlining the importance of each domain and key things to remember, but honestly it isn't even that important

I’m in the process of marrying two different sets of review sheets. I don’t have the ability to get them to you any faster than I currently am (at least a week prior to each exam). But they are a combination of the sheets found in these two folders, so feel free to use these uncombined versions if they are helpful to you

A vocab list of key terms that we should know when we start a domain or specific lesson. Similarly to how you put them in the review sheet before a test, but I think it would be helpful to have them in the beginning as we're learning in class. Maybe add them to the pdq?

Class Structure

I would change how we are spoken to for eighty minutes straight a lot of the time. It is hard to stay focused and interested for such a long period of time with such difficult material.

Totally agreed, which is why I never do this. I would very much like to talk more with you about this perception to see what the disconnect is here.

I think bringing in more visuals would help me.

The AV material in the in-class slideshows is pretty maxed out as far as I can tell, but I’m putting in more over the course of this year. The prezi’s are an AV feast.

In the activities, I would change some of them to make them more involved. For the most part the labs are pretty interesting and I like them a lot but as for the activities in the packets, they could be more interesting.

I really don’t mean to sound flippant with what follows, but at the college level, interest is very much self-generated. I am sorry that you don’t find the work in the packets interesting, but all I can do is find the most interesting things I can and put them in the packets.

I don't know if it's possible but the repetition of topics already handled(rats with different fur coats) isn't always the most exciting. I know there can't always be new things all the time, but just a thought.

More examples of what we're going over, even though we already have plenty; I feel like more would just be even more beneficial. These would help us out most on our exams since the questions are what we went over but can be tricky so preparing us for that would be optimal.

This is very much an instructional choice on my part, as dictated by the AP exam. The reason the examples come up multiple times is because they can be viewed through multiple lenses. To take the Rock Pocket Mouse as an example, we have been able to look at that from the perspective of evolution, population genetics, molecular genetics, and cell biology. At the same time, I think I bring in a lot of examples. I’ll try to bring in more. As a reminder, the exam review sheets give you a pile of things that you should have examples for.

I would prefer more "lecture time" of learning the material instead of doing activities on it. I think the lectures are more useful since the examples provided are the most useful.

This is very much a learning style statement. And while I won’t suggest that you are wrong to feel this way, I will tell you that the vast majority of research points toward doing things as the much more effective way of learning than when the teacher just tells you about them. I am happy to give you more resources that you can use to get lectured at. Try Paul Anderson’s channel for a start. Or you can watch me on the Get-A-Five site. But here’s my question to you: Why should we spend more time lecturing in-class if there is no shortage of extracurricular opportunities to get lectured at? Also, you might want to touch base with the person up at the top of this section who feels like I lecture too much of the time.

The time we spend on things, certain topics should have more time spent on them, while others the minimum amount of time should be spent.

I totally get what you are saying here, but I hope you can see that I can’t really know how much time you, personally, need on a particular subject. I can only use my expertise as an educator to try to provide the appropriate timing for topics, and then make myself available at extra help.

Maybe spend a little more time going over the PDQs.

If you ever have lingering questions on a PDQ after we discuss content on the day that it is due, please ask those questions when I ask the group if anyone has any questions. We can take as much time as you need. Totally fine by me.

Less work that doesn't really help you understand anything.

I think you mean less work that doesn’t really help you understand anything. But I’d caution you about assuming that the work that doesn’t help you doesn’t help anyone else. I am completely anti-busy work. All work done in class is targeted to specific standards of the course. If I didn’t think the work was worth doing, I wouldn’t assign it.

Don't assign as much work as already assigned because it is hard to understand certain aspects of the work when there's tremendous amounts of work thrown at us.

This is more a function of how college works than it is anything else. The general formula is “one hour of class equals three hours of extracurricular work”. I think it’s much closer to 1:2 for this class (if not less). To help blunt this sentiment, there is no requirement to complete non-summative work outside of class time. I also hope we can agree that I have never short-sold the tremendous amount of work that is given in this course.

Journals:

JOURNALS! Its one thing to make us write about the material and reaction to it, but it's another to be really critical about it. Its the students opinion on what we learned and how we feel about it. It gets annoying to make the journals a certain way. Up to this date Mr.K has been on students case to "perfect," journal entries, I mean yes it may help you teach but try being more lenient about it. I suggest you abolish it, or make it optional, or stop it next semester.

I apologize if this is what you took from my comments on your journal. I am not interested in perfection, nor do I think it exists. Students who have received comments like the ones expressed above were not following the given instructions for journal entries, or were not submitting them at all. I have no requirement for journal structure or content outside of the instructions as demonstrated by the variety of sample entries that have been provided in the journaling assignment guidelines.

Journaling is getting too repetitive and boring, but we still need to do it in order to justify our grades at the end of the quarter.

I feel like the electronic journals aren't adding that much to my learning experience.

I am in favor of doing one electronic journal every two weeks. There would be a larger assortment of things to write about. Maybe we should try it.

I would change having to keep a weekly journal because i personally feel like there's no benefit to filling one out and it causes problems (more work) instead of solving them (being able to focus on materials i don't understand).

If Mr. Knuffke does keep the journals it shouldn't have to be a requirement

As discussed in class if you feel like any of this applies in your case, provide me with an alternative that demonstrates that you are considering the work we are doing and how it connects to the larger project of understanding Biology. I’m totally open to suggestions. At the point where I am writing this, I have received no suggestions.

Instructor Style:

I think if you maybe talk slower sometimes. We can understand and grasp some concepts better.

Talk slower

Sure thing. Feel free to tell me to slow down or repeat myself. I won’t be upset.

Knuffke no one is perfect but be open to some changes. You're great as a person but I guess some students are not connecting with your teaching style. It is very unique and different. It's November and we still are trying to adapt to your teaching.

I would caution whomever wrote the above to speak for himself/herself rather than the whole group. Similarly, I would expect to continue adapting for the rest of our time together, were I you. If you’re looking for a course where the class is largely the same from day-to-day, this is not that course.

Move a little slower and review work more thoroughly. Most the time I don't know if my answers are right or not.

I’m concerned by the notion that students are sitting in class unsure about the answers to the work they are doing, and are unwilling to ask questions to that effect. Who is supposed to advocate for your learning if not yourself? As you transition to College, you need to develop this ability, or you will be lost.

Take more time explaining things like we do after PDQs and less time working on packet pages.

I am happy to spend as much time as is needed explaining things. At current, I would say that the “my questions:student questions” ratio during a typical class is somewhere north of 9:1. I would dearly love to see that shift more to the right, but that requires students to ask questions.

I like when he writes things on the board while going over our PDQ's oppose to just saying things. I feel I retain it better when I see it and copy it down.

Duly noted. I would also encourage you to work on your note-taking skills for spoken words, as this is going to be the main way that professors convey information to you next year. You are certainly welcome to record our discussions if that will help you.